Michael Sabia, the former deputy finance minister who authorized the use of anti-terror legislation to freeze bank accounts during the Freedom Convoy protests, has been appointed Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet. Blacklock's Reporter says Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the $371,000-a year promotion Wednesday without addressing Sabia’s role in the bank freeze later declared unlawful by a federal judge.“Mr. Sabia will help us deliver,” said Carney. “Canada’s exemplary public service with Mr. Sabia at the helm will advance nation-building projects.”.In 2022, Sabia’s finance department directed RCMP to create a blacklist of protest supporters under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act. A total of 437 bank and credit union accounts and bitcoin wallets were frozen, impacting $7.8 million. The federal government took the action despite no formal designation of the protestors as terrorists.A 2024 Federal Court ruling found the freeze illegal. “The scope of the regulations was overbroad in so far as it captured people who simply wanted to join in the protest by standing on Parliament Hill carrying a placard,” wrote Justice Richard Mosley..Sabia testified at the Public Order Emergency Commission on November 17, 2022, that he had no information confirming whether protestors were terrorists. “We had no information one way or the other,” he said. Pressed further, he declined to give a yes or no answer. “People have every right to protest,” Sabia added. “That’s an important part of our democratic system.”Commission counsel Gordon Cameron questioned whether freezing accounts of protestors’ families crossed a line. “Who takes responsibility for the fact these accounts were frozen, that people couldn’t pay their rent, that people couldn’t buy their groceries?” he asked. “You’re starting to affect more than the protestors and you know that.”Carney did not mention the Freedom Convoy or the court ruling in his announcement. During the 2022 protests, Carney wrote in The Globe & Mail that sending money to the Convoy amounted to funding sedition. “You are funding sedition,” he wrote. No protestor was ever charged with sedition, and RCMP said there was no evidence linking participants to any violent insurrection.
